Never Seen It Podcast

Never Seen It Podcast — Episode 95 Backrooms (2026)

Episode Summary

We dive deep into Backrooms (2026), exploring why Kane Parsons' breakout horror film is far more than an internet meme adaptation. We discuss liminal spaces, psychological horror, cosmic horror, memory, trauma, filmmaking, and why original indie movies may be shaping the future of Hollywood.

Episode Notes

Is Backrooms the first truly great internet horror movie?

This week, we explore one of the year's most talked-about films, Backrooms (2026). We break down Kane Parsons' ambitious adaptation of the viral Backrooms phenomenon and discuss why this psychological horror film succeeds by focusing on memory, trauma, and identity rather than traditional jump scares.

We examine the film's use of liminal spaces, cosmic horror, and psychological decay, unpack Clark's descent into obsession, debate the film's mysterious ending, and share our biggest theories about what the Backrooms really are.

Along the way, we're joined by filmmaker and Rewind of the Living Dead co-host Patrick, who offers incredible insight into storytelling, horror, and why ambiguity makes this film so effective.

We also discuss:

Why Backrooms feels like modern folklore.
The psychology behind liminal spaces.
How memory and trauma shape the Backrooms.
Kane Parsons' incredible achievement as a young filmmaker.
Why audiences are embracing original indie horror over blockbuster franchises.
The connections between Backrooms, AI, found footage, and cosmic horror.
Our favorite scenes, theories, and interpretations of the film's ending.

If you're looking for an in-depth Backrooms ending explained discussion filled with film analysis, horror theories, and filmmaking conversation, this episode is for you.

Also check out this cool website called The Closet: https://the-criterion-closet.vercel.app/ where you can explore a virtual 1:1 version of the famous Criterion Closet. ending-explained

Episode Transcription

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Welcome to the Never Seen Podcast, the only podcast called Never Seen It That's worth listening to.

With us tonight, Mr. Daily Dares, aka.

Filipino Grigio, aka.

Alex Kaleo is here.

Mr. Donnie Appleseed, aka Donnie Guzman,

the Cousins Calgo forward slash Guzman, Mr.

Ghost Nerd 88, aka Justin Holden

And then there's me, Boots Too Big, aka.

Adrian Delat.

And our special guest tonight, an award-winning filmmaker from San Diego, California.

He has spent his entire adult life working in the film industry.

His latest short film, The Path is currently making the festival circuit.

He's also the co-host of the Rewind of the Living Dead podcast

Welcome to the show, Mr. Director Patrick.

Oh, you, thank you so much for having me.

This is as Alex mentioned before the show.

Minimum five years in the making.

And yeah, well, hopefully, and hopefully, you know,

you like us enough after this that you'll be on again soon.

You know what I mean?

We'll see.

So, but no, thanks for being on, seriously.

And, yeah, so we're discussing the 2026 film Backrooms

I found something.

In the store.

Okay.

What did you find?

The place.

They found a place

directed by Kane Parsons starring.

And, oh, man, you're going to hate me for it's hard

to pronounce this person's name, this person's name.

I'm going to give him my best try.

Chiatel, E. Egford?

It's pretty good.

And Renee Renes V

I think.

It's French.

I could be completely wrong on her name as well.

Mark Duplace, Finn Bennettett, Lakita Maxwell.

Backrooms is a movie about a strange doorway which appears in the

basement of a furniture showroom, which is probably the most understatement

log line of a movie I've ever read, but there it is.

And yeah, so I chose back rooms and I chose it because

liminal spaces has been a thing that's been an interest to me for a while subconsciously.

I always, even long before this movie, came out, I always

like enjoyed those sorts of videos I would come across on social media.

I remember the original Backrooms photo.

I think I saw that on Reddit

and there was something, I don't know, striking about a photo

of a plain yellow wall.

And I don't know, I don't know what it is.

Maybe we'll get into the psychology of that tonight.

But yeah, just interesting movie all around.

The log line is basically just that.

You have his main character, Clark.

Clark is a struggling, essentially furniture

salesman in the 1990s, who is a former architect, divorce man, bit of an alcoholic.

And uh, yeah, he discovers this magical portal into another world.

I don't know if magical is the right word, but

Patrick, obviously, we've all seen it here.

I want to start with you, though, Patrick.

Limminal spaces.

Does that do anything for you?

What do you think?

It actually really does.

I think my whole social media journey,

since probably the inception of Instagram, has been about

cating vibes.

And so anytime I kind of, I

kind of latched on or saw something that I thought was visually

striking, it would pique my interest.

And, you know, with regards to the back rooms, I knew the lore and stuff, but I never got into it.

I'm actually not a big YouTuber.

I'm not big on watching things on YouTube, but I knew what it was.

I knew enough about it

but the concept of it, the concept of these kind of endless

hidden spaces underground piqued the

kid adventurer in me because when I was a kid roaming

the streets of San Diego, we would look for like, you know, storm

drains to explore and just, just these empty

unexplored spaces. and it conjured something

in, you know, seeing that, it conjured something in me there where I was just like, whatever this is I'm in.

I don't, I don't, I've never seen a back rooms YouTube short nothing.

I just, it's just like, whatever this is

show it to me.

I get it.

I understand the idea.

And I, you know, I want to explore with the filmmaker and whatever they have to say.

Gotcha.

Now, Donnie, you watched this just the other day.

I believe you were in the theater by yourself.

Yes.

Tell me about that.

I'm just curious.

Just tell me about that experience

Yeah, I mean, I felt like it was like totally setting me up for the movie.

I go in and I'm the only one there that's booking his seat.

And the theater itself, if you've seen my posts on my stories,

it looks like you're in that space, right?

Just with color, more color than what it shows in a movie.

But I thought it was a great intro to the movie before I even stepped into the movie itself.

What do you guys think it is about

a void that seems like an endless space

that like triggers, is it like some kind of flight or fight

response in in our like monkey brains?

Like, what do you guys think, Alex?

I think it has a lot to do with

not what you can see in front of you,

but what you can't see on your peripherals.

It's this sort of, especially the choir

it is, the more frightening it

can conjure up images in your own head.

Because you're constantly thinking of what

bad things could be waiting around the corners, especially if you're

walking through a hallway and there's a lot of like, you

know, corners and edges that you just can't, you don't know what's..

It's almost on like a metaphor for life.

It's like, you don't know what's coming around the corner.

And that that's kind of the frightening thing, but kind of like the exciting thing as well.

So it taps into like so many different emionsions.

What do you think about that, Patrick?

He's on the money.

I'm going to shout out another podcast that I love for all the writers in the audience, Writers Blockbusters

And they broke down the back rooms.

I listened to them like I go there as like my writing gym

because they're constantly reiterating certain writing techniques.

It really helps me.

And they were talking about something they coined, which was called Dread Flags.

And the back rooms just as as an entity as a space

is full of dread flags.

It's full of, uncanny things like furniture in the wrong place.

Weird sounds, people standing

still in the distance, things that don't belong there.

Like we see the seagull, you know, that does not belong there.

Yeah.

All of these little things add up.

Like all these dread flags that they created

for that podcast, they're like, the back rooms is chock

full of every dread flag you can imagine.

It's just, it's, it's a, it's an uncanny

space, an uncanny taps into something, some primal fear for all humans.

So I, there was something interesting that I found out just today

So there's a fly in that scene where Clark

is trying, like, and the, they found

out about that portal because of the fly flying through the wall.

I read about that.

Yeah, and how it was an accident sort of thing because there was

like a fly that was in the studio. that was flying around and they couldn't get rid of it.

So Kane made it part of the lore, the movie.

So I thought that was really interesting.

That's a great

That's a great fun fact.

Justin, what do you think?

I mean, as our resident horror person, I mean, what is it about liminal spaces?

Does it trigger something in you?

Yes.

And I think the thing that comes

to mind first, Adrian, you, you were security at Shadow Mountain, right?

No, no, sorry, not Sh Oasis.

Oh, it was Oasis.

Okay, never mind.

There was someone else that worked at Shadow Mountain with me that I know.

This is a different.

But no, no.

You worked at Oasis.

I guess Oasis kind of felt the same way.

Well, there's a Shadow Mountain resort in Palm Springs,

and I worked Night Shift Security for that place.

And once the lobby is

closed for the night, it's like dead still.

And there were like a few nights in particular

where I wouldn't have any check-ins for the entirety of the night.

No online check-ins, reservations in.

There's sometimes like in the dead of summer where there

was just no one else on property except maybe one or two people that were like living there

But by the time like 10 p.m. rolled around,

it was it was dead silent throughout that whole property.

And walking through these empty

spaces was a little bit unnerving.

And also, I think at the same time, like I I was told

that, oh, it was like possibly haunted.

So it kind of like made things a little bit eeri because

like, I think the eerie thing and why I

bring that up as an example is because like

liminal spaces, especially the back

rooms, they appear lived in.

Like even the wallpaper is kind of like used in old looking.

You know, you do have furniture in odd places, but

it looks like that it's lived in and the dread of being

alone somewhere that constantly has

potentially has people everywhere all

the time, but in that moment when it's

dead silent and there's no one around and it's just you, it's

a little bit more of an unnerving kind of experience

which is why I think a lot of liminal spaces

kind of affects me a little bit more. especially found footage.

The way that they started this movie off with the found footage was amazing.

Now, going back to a previous episode when

we did Shelby Oaks, remember how we were all like

oh, we loved the found footage thing that happened in the beginning of Shelby Oaks.

And then it went to a weird documentary, which was still fine.

And then it cut to the actual movie.

Backrooms

is the best example of how to do that properly.

I agree.

I think if you compare pair Shelby Oaks to Backrooms, you're like,

okay, this is how you do like a found footage movie, but

you still want to have like a live action sense

and storyline to it and everything.

And then it was cut just so well

that it just made sense and

it fit, if you get what I'm saying.

Oh, absolutely.

That's a great point.

Yeah.

Kane Parsons, you know, a 20 year old kid, very talented kid.

Like, he's been working on this since he was in his, you know, teens and stuff

And, he was able to knock it out of the park.

Chris Duckman, I' not, not shitting on him, but you know, he's

been a movie critic on YouTube for a long time, very successful.

And his first movie didn't knock it out of the park necessarily,

you know, but it's just interesting how like age doesn't really matter like as far as talent goes

And you really got to hand it to King Park.

You got to hand it to both of them, especially King Parsons being still so young.

And a lot of people seemed like they were sort of disappointed

because they were expecting this movie to be like some sort of fast-paced horror

cat and mouse type thing.

I don't know.

But it's way more psychological than that.

And I think that's I think it's better for it.

I mean, what do you guys think?

I mean, Patrick, you must have an opinion on that.

That is what impressed me so much about backrooms is that it did not rely

on its visual stylings.

It did not rely on.

It could have been a completely found footage movie.

It could have been completely liminal space creepiness.

They want to examine psychological terror.

And that's a very mature subject for a 20 yearold.

That's what it really impressed me is that he wanted to lean into that.

And credit to his cowriter Will Sudick, who is a veteran TV

writer and has done a lot of great work in his, I think he's done Homeland

and under or the,

I forget the other shows on HBO, but he's he's done good work.

And so examining, you know, psychological

decay on and using the template of

the backrooms, which are going to sort of psychological decay?

That's amazing.

It's 100% what Clark's going to through.

He's going, when we meet him the first time we meet

him, he's sitting there and he's wild-eyed in front of his

therapist.

You already see Clark's in a bad spot.

I am a He's fucking architectct.

Yeah, I mean, he's in a bad place, and

he is breaking down.

And then and to use that parallel of the back rooms

breaking down your memories, breaking down your obsessive thoughts and all of that stuff.

I don't know if you saw my video on the idea that the back rooms is a cosmic horror.

I did I get into that later.

Yeah.

But it's like, that's how the back rooms eats you

through your psychological, through your psychosis.

And I was like, God, that is such a mature approach

for such a young filmmaker to latch onto.

I loved it.

Every interview I've seen with Kane Parsons, he seems so mature

and intelligent for his age.

I don't know.

When I was 20 years old, I wasn't talking as

eloquently as he.

I don't know I barely talk eloquently now, but like I see interviews with him and I'm like,

man, this kid's like, he, he knows his shit.

Like, he's really smart.

And by the way, Will Sudek, uh, he's written on,

like you said, several shows, including Westworld, which I don't know if you guys watched that on HBO.

Great show

Similar type of like, not liminal

vibes, but there's that sort of dread type of vibes throughout that series, just as well.

It's a reality reality breaking.

Reality of breaking.

Yeah.

Of like what is real, what isn't.

And that's I kind of feel like that's what's going on in vac rooms as well.

Well, somebody said that they think back rooms is like the modern folklore

story.

What do you think about that, Alex?

Modern folklore as in..

Yeah, like.

Like what's, like a blueprint for what today's what's going on today?

Yeah, exactly.

Like, I don't know.

Like, they say that certain type of genres of horror that came

out, depending on when they came out, were representative of the times, like zombie movies

Oh, and they were big in the.

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

I think, and it kind of really does speak to what's going on today.

Because like you look at how technology and kids these days

like communicate or the lack thereof.

And there's the whole idea of tech.

There's Toy Story 5 right now.

They have that the whole idea of, you know, tech

versus, you know, using your imagination.

I haven't seen that movie yet.

I've heard.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah.

I loved it.

There's there's a discourse between like how they nailed

it and how they didn't, but that's neither here they're there

But that in that sense, there's that sort of horror

of the breakdown of how people are processing memory.

How are kids these days who are like seeing the world through

a screen, going to actually process reality

when faced with it.

And even now, even now, like, they're

filming everything with their phones

and this is where their memory lives, not in here.

That's a good point.

That's a good point.

Donnie, was there any visceral reactions you had when watching this movie?

I know I had some edge of my seat moments, but you were in the theater alone.

Like, was there anything that was like having you on the edge of your seat?

I kind of went into it, not really knowing much about any of it, right?

I just, I just knew that we were going to watch it.

So I was like, let me go in here and watch that.

I watched a trailer a few minutes before that, and I watched a short clip that

Justin had sent over and shared, which kind of gave me

like the back, you know, some information about what it's about.

But I was on the edge of Mixy the whole time.

I wasn't sure what I was expecting.

I didn't know what type of horror it was, but I

was like fixated the whole entire time, which I found, you know,

for it being so like not fast paced, like I was

I had my undivided attention for sure throughout the whole movie.

And I know, I hope this doesn't come off as as too topical, but like

back rooms and obsession are like the two horror movies,

the two movies in general right now that are killing it, both like critically and even financially.

And then you have big movies like

Mandalorian and Grogu and even like the upcoming Supergirl

movie that are that's projected to not make a lot of money as much as they thought it would.

What does it say about the current culture that like these types of movies are just like killing it?

Whereas like the big tenpole movies are struggling like like, what do you guys think about that?

And again, I don't want to be too topical, but I feel like it kind of

is interesting to talk about it either way. just, do you have any thoughts on that?

Since I think you've seen both Obsession and

back in the I have one.

Yeah.

For those of you that haven't seen

Obsession yet, I highly recommend you go see it now.

Mute this podcast and go to the theater with

the podcast still on, but mute it so you don't deserve anybody.

No, Obsession was insane.

I think audiences are

beginning to change, especially with the

new generation who are able to afford the tickets themselves

and go themselves.

Your options are actually extremely limited.

Not in the sense that there isn't like a movie to go watch, but

it's limited because going to the theater is expensive

And a lot of younger people, these days,

inflation is absolutely beating them into the ground.

So their options are to choose one

thing out of the list of many other things that.

And me in particular, you know, I love movies.

I try to see as many as I can

all the time, but there

comes a time where you're like, okay, well, I definitely

don't know a whole lot about this one movie, but

I definitely know a little bit more about this one.

So I'm interested in this one.

So I'm going to choose this one and that's where my money's going to go.

And that's a result of like

you know, I don't want to choose this because if it sucks, I feel

like I wasted my money and my time.

And then I don't want to be, you know, spoon fed, you know, what they call slop, you know?

I don't, and I don't blame them.

Like, it's expensive.

Like, if you don't have like, those like rewards

programs or anything like that, for like two people, it's easily 50

bucks, maybe more, you know, and I'm being nice about it.

Yeah.

but, you know, unless like you have like an AMC

thing or a Regal thing or whatever, you know, it's

it's a little bit more reasonable to go see as many movies as you can.

That's why that $25 a month,

unlimited movies, a month thing, you know, comes in handy, but

for people that don't get to watch a whole lot of media

because they don't have a lot of time, you know, it's a picky-choossy situation

now and nobody wants to go see the same stuff anymore.

Like,

and I think, you know, Alex is making a blog post about it, so I'm not going to talk too much about it.

But, you know, Star Wars is coming in on the low end.

Marvel coming in on the low end.

And then finally, we're seeing like this resurgence of indie films.

Not that they've ever went away, but people are like, oh, okay, in original idea

I think people are just sick and tired of,

you know, the same shit all the time.

And that's where the state of film is at.

It's like they have to choose now and

it's a financial decision now.

You don't have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to drop.

I feel like if you, if you tell the right stories, people will come

And even if that means like, yeah, shelling out the 20 bucks a ticket or whatever it is these days.

But yeah, Patrick, what do you think about that?

Just in general?

Like, I mean, are we seeing a resurgence of like indie filmmakers?

Is this like the new Hollywoodollywood wave, like, you know, type of era we're in right now?

Or what do you think?

I do think that

the success of obsession and and backwards,

you know, back rooms, by the way, you know, put out by a

billion dollar valuated studio.

Like, it's not like 824 it's a tiny little studio.

That's true.

But they didn't spend a lot of money and it made them a lot of money back.

The good news there

is that what Hollywood does is Hollywood chases the trend.

They just chase what's hot.

And so they go, oh, so what's hot is filmmakers

with completely original voices and we don't spend a lot of money on their movie.

That's all they're seeing.

They're just looking at those metrics

So they just see the metrics and go, great, we'll chase that.

So what you are going to see, like, you know, Warner Brothers just

announced, a watercolor is there now indie,

you know, arm of the Warner Brothers, which that's ridiculous.

It's not indie at all.

It's part of the one of the biggest, most financially successful studios of all time. used to be.

That's like their indie arm now, you say?

That's going to be their arthouse arm, their neon, their A24 competitor

So they're going to chase that because,

and specifically because they beat Gro,

specifically because Marvel movies and DC movies tend to

underperform like they used to be, they're going after the dollars.

They're only going to chase the dollars.

They still won't get it that what we

really want is original and interesting stuff.

Luckily

the interesting original stuff is made making

money this year, so Hollywood will chase that.

Yeah.

Right now, because of the success of movies like Back and Obsession,

I keep seeing these articlesping up that Hollywood is turning to Reddit and

YouTube for like the next big star, the next big storyteller.

But then like, I read that YouTube is already YouTube is bigger than Netflix.

So isn't YouTube in a way its own Hollywood?

Like, why is YouTube turning or why is Hollywood turning into YouTube?

YouTube is just the new

big platform that is Hollywood and everything.

It's all encompassing.

I mean, is it fraaught you think, to do that?

What do you guys think about that?

I mean, that's that's exactly what Hollywood will do.

That's the exact message they get.

They go, oh, Kane Parsons, big YouTuber.

Kane Barker, big YouTuber.

So we need to find a YouTuber..

Like they't, they're not thinking about, no, it's the messaging,

but what they are seeing and what they have been tracking for a while now.

Actually, it's not new.

But for years now, they've been looking for

people with built-in audiences.

That's a good point.

And it's 100% successful.

The character of Clark is in therapy.

His therapist is Mary.

And I want to talk about her character because Clark is interesting, but her character

is interesting in the sense that we get flashbacks of her life

with like a mother that is like paranoid and puts newspapers on the windows.

And I wasn't super clear on that.

I read some theories.

Some people think it was Mary's mom in the back rooms and that's what she was paranoid about.

And I thought that was really spicy.

What do you guys think about that?

Alex, do you do you have any theories on that?

Or do you Lend any cred credence to that theory at all?

It's all plausible.

You know what I mean?

Like, I think that it's one of those details

that you could can apply to like different theories.

Like she could just be paranoid in general, but

given the context of the film, yeah, that's very plausible.

Maybe she was

I mean, you have to consider the fact that, okay, what

age was she when, like, you see, kind of see those flashbacks?

she like Mary was like a child or something.

Yeah.

Like, like eight years old. 8 to 10, something like that..

So then, like, like flash forward to like

like 20 years from that point.

Yeah, it kind of makes sense.

It could have even been like like the start of the whole back rooms

thing when she saw, you know, like my theory about the back

rooms is that they, you know, that whole ASIC thing and they, they had the MRI machine

Like that MRI machine is like, like kind

of, I don't know, sort of a, becomes this sort

of out of control situation where it's like

like reading everything and like checking

everybody's memory and it's kind of collecting

all this data and it's just, and it's storing it in

in this every expanding back room. doesn't

that have certain parallels with the whole AI thing we're going through right now?

Absolutely.

You know, because it collects, it scrapes all the data

with nobody's consent, by the way.

And then, you put in a prompt and it

can give you something close to reality or it can completely go off the rails and hallucinate.

I love that parallel.

Just that alone is such a great, I don't know, just the way that

it parallels real life is interesting to me in that sense.

Visually, though, about going back to Mary and her flashbacks,

I don't know if you guys, I'm sure you caught this, that kind of caught me by surprise

in a good way, was this transition where they're putting their hands in

the cement and then she gets that piece of cement later on that she carries with her.

But when she she's in the flashback as a little girl

and then you see all the like cement and stuff coming over her

and then it kind of like transitions to the next shot.

That was such a, I don't know, that that kind of, to me, my surprise.

To me, that kind of symbolizes like a where the physical reality

and the memory come into play.

That tangible thing of the handprint And

then, but you have that physical thing and she's carrying that around, right?

But then that's still also in her memory.

And so that becomes a part of the back room

Right.

So she's able to draw on like the real

things that she's has been able to touch with her

hands, but they become manipulated or

altered or the degradation of memory

has like manipulated into something completely different.

And that's the case for the pirate character of Clark, right?

It becomes this monster.

If you think about it, that furniture store

is this monster of this thing that's like weighing on Clark's back.

Like he wants it to succeed, but it's eating him alive

and it like destroying a lot of things around him.

And that's kind of the thing with the back room.

It's eating our realities alive. and it's blurring what's going on.

And if you think, I've seen promos.

I mean, I'm pretty sure it's like, I, yeah, it was in the movie itself.

You see the levels

of like it going down.

And it degrades over time. degrades and things just disappear

and like get flipped upside down and all that sort of stuff.

And that's kind of, like if you think about your own memory,

like, you're, you remember something from your past, but as

you get older, it becomes blurry, more and more and more blurry

Like I look back at, you know, say, for instance, a

memory of me like jumping off a roof.

I Back when I was like 10 years old, I

was a little bit more vivid and I could see it more clear.

But now I only see me

jumping off the roof.

I see a chain link fence, I see a basketball hoop.

And then I don't even see the faces of my cousins

and my older brother are where they were standing.

I just know they were there.

I remember just landing on the ground in the grass

and I landed and I like the air got

like shoved out of my stomach and I couldn't breathe.

But that's all I can remember.

Back then, I'm sure I could remember it vividly.

It's like a VHS tape degradation over time, which copies a less quality.

Donnie, sorry about that.

You had your hand up.

Oh, it was it was for earlier, and I was going to comment about

how Mary's mom was in the movie, like just going back to that.

Yeah, definitely.

I feel like, yeah, I feel like that that,

you know, the movie focuses on Clark and his issues,

but really like Mary herself also has all these issues, right?

The mom putting up that, you know, the windows covering the windows.

Like she's she basically isolated them from the world also.

And so she's experiencing the same fears and the

same emotions that we see convey in Clark's character.

So it kind of goes full circle.

It's like she also has those same issues and some fears of

isolation from her childhood and her traumas that she experienced that

that she's preaching and trying to fix, you know, with the issues that Clark has.

So it's like they're both, they're both in it in the same,

kind of like in the same issue, but in different ways, right?

No, definitely.

That's a great point.

Justin.

It's interesting that she's a therapist

because when she was isolated

by her mom, I

think her becoming a therapist was more like, you

know, nobody was able to help my mom.

So this is my chance to help somebody else

Unfortunately, much like her own mom, she

couldn't necessarily help Clark because like

at the end, he wanted to be there and you can't

help somebody that doesn't necessarily want to help themselves

And I thought that was pretty interesting.

Also, the handprint in the cement,

like you guys said earlier, it's the handprint itself is a memory.

And her using it to

hit Captain Clark in the head with

it and breaks it is her moving

the way it's represented to me is her moving on from her own personal trauma.

and, you know, escaping that part of her life.

I think she is able to kind

of forget things in the past,

you know, and get over it, more or less get over it.

That's a good point.

Patrick?

It sort of makes me think and forgive

me for hijacking the podcast for a second, but I maybe I do want

to open this up to everybody, which is the idea of,

you know, by the end of this movie, has she actually escaped the back rooms?

And I think the answer is, in my opinion, definitively

you can't.

And that's why I stick to

the theory that the backrooms itself is an entity that

AIC has somehow tapped it into and

that entity is feeding on these thoughts that we can't let go of specifically.

And that's why we become these stuttered repeated

versions of ourselves as it spits us as spits apart

digests us and spits us back out as half memories, as pieces of memories

And so I think that the common

denominator between Mary and Clark Clark is that they can't let go of

some things and the back rooms can feed on that.

They're just like, great.

And it's and then it becomes the, you know, the grander theme is

don't let your negative

emotions and and your repetitive, negative thinking, eat you alive because it will.

And, you know, like, don't get into a place where it gets so deep, you can't escape.

And that to me seems to be prevalent

for those, you know, this this movie is a very small movie.

It's it's only Clark and Mary for the most part.

Yeah, for most of it.

And it's like they just take that examination.

Here's these two characters, one who thinks they're trying to help,

one who's not even trying to help themselves and what happens

when they step through this portal.al. is,

you know, there's this like point of no return.

I don't know.

Do we do spoilers here?

I'm trying to dance

that.

Yeah.

We should be warning at the top of the show that we're doing spoilers.

I forgot forgot to do that.

Oh, that's fine.

I just, I thought to myself, when she sits there with

Phil at the end and she's talking about it, and she's like, am I ever going to get out of here?

And he just looks at her.

He's like, you don't, you have no idea.

You're never escaping.

That's a great point.

Alex, you add something?

There's a slight conjuring up of

like memories of being John Max.

Malkovich when you consider.. the

whole like sort of memory, like like we're in John

Malkovich, you only see John Malkovich's memories and everything like that.

For the the most part

and you're seeing things through his eyes.

Whereas in the back rooms, you

see everybody's memories through like everybody's eyes.

And it becomes this sort of mashup thing.

And that's kind of like where I think when you consider

the back rooms, that's why it's such a jumbled mess to begin with.

It's trying to place an order

of everything that's all the information it's being given

but that's why you get all these like sort of degradated

and tainted versions of different

people that are in the back rooms.

You get like faint memories of like,

and you and I'm curious as to why sets certain things.

You see like that

that short man who's in that room with

like Clark and and Mary and you're like, so where does that come from?

And then you think about like the other characters

in there and why, why they're acting the way they are or why they look the way.

And it's kind of like you, you think back to

being John Malkovich, where I need to watch that movie again.

That was such a great movie, but it's been so long.

It's so good that you see like different versions.

It kind of brought me back to that film.

And I think think that you could see so much of that imprint of that.

But then, like, I think like you had posted a blog about

the backrooms as well on our website about the Matrix

and how there's, like, I mean, you could speak more

about how you feel, like about that connection.

Just what I had the theme of that was

just that I feel like when Matrix sort of did to storytelling

and filmmaking in general in 1999 was what

I think this movie is sort of doing now is in terms of like leading a revolution and like

not so much in special effects, but like more in storytelling and

like less is more type of thing.

And also, you know, alternate worlds as well.

Well, what I think I got from that too is like questioning reality as well.

Right, right, right.

Like this is, again, like, we're in the in the

Matrix, you question reality, like in being being

John Malkovich, you question reality.

the same way in that you do that in

back rooms, but you in the back rooms, you ultimately

there is no reality anymore.

You know, if you think about it, it's, everything is

just occurring and it's like this sort of like this mashing of worlds.

The world's colliding, so to speak.

Like a world between worlds almost.

Yeah.

Donning?

Yeah, I just wanted to comment on like how everything looks in in the back rooms, right?

Like I For me, when I was watching it, it reminded

me strongly of like, I don't know, when you put it in a

prompt poorly into AI, right?

Like you're trying to generate an image and like the way it spits

it out, like anatomical inaccuracies and things like that.

I just, I don't know if he was like trying to

you know, say something in regards to like the culture today

and how everybody is in front of their screens all the time.

I'm not sure, but it definitely reminded me about it reminded

me of AI and where we are today in the world.

Definitely.

Justin.

So the

original concept, and if you guys watched the original YouTube

video from, was it for years ago, Kane Parsons original

interpretation of it.

I liked the fact that it

was kind of sort of video game

inspired where you just out of nowhere, just no clip through an environment.

Because

in gaming, I don't know how familiar you

are with how some things in games work, but when

you when you are playing

a game and you reach a point that has like,

you like trigger something in event or maybe a character pops

out while you're playing a game.

Usually they are

no clipped somewhere under the map or

there are no clipped somewhere in a building and they're just kind

of te-posing the entire time until you

hit that trigger and then it prompts them to

come up and interact with the character.

I liked that original concept.

I do like where Kane went and expanded

on it and just kind of created like a whole new

way of telling this back room story.

But I still believe that

the no clipping is a fact or

a factor in the backrooms.

I think it's just told in a different way that

makes a little bit more sense to the common watcher

which I think allows this movie to be

a little bit more palatable for all audiences

instead of just this niche group of people that

knows about how no clipping works in video games.

So

I like how he's adapted it a little bit, but I still believe

that he uses the no clipping because if

he didn't, if there wasn't any of that no clipping,

I don't think Clark would have even discovered

I mean, besides the light, that the little smidget

of light that he saw by standing at an angle, I

still consider that to be no clipping, though, into

this adjacent world.

It's not even an alternate world because I still think that the back rooms are

apart of our reality,

uh, it's just slightly adjacent.

It's accessible, uh, and it's monumentous, almost infinite.

Um, but I still think it's still

grounded in reality in some shape or form.

You bring up video games.

I was thinking about the Minecraft farlands, like the farther

you go into the the map, the less and less things make sense.

Like physically, like it's the way the game is written or

something that like the farther out you go, everything becomes

some twisted, bizarre version of itself.

And it's like, there's parallels there too, you know, so that that is

an interesting concept.

I really want to talk about the dinner scene with

Mary and Clark and the two Stilllives, I believe, is what they're called.

There's a lot being said there

But what do you guys think about?

And I'll start with you, Patrick.

What does that scene represent and told to you, like to, does Clark kind of give up at that point?

Is he given up?

And he's like, I'm, this is my life now, this is my world.

Like, what was he trying to accomplish at the end there, you think?

I hate to do the crazy theory thing, but I can't help it.

And because so much of it is left unanswered into our

interpretation, which I love, by the way, I'm a big fan of that.

I don't know that that's Clark sitting across the table from her.

Oh.

I think

that the entity eventually

takes hold of that version of Clark and is

trying to convince her that this is all good.

And the only reason I think that, I used to, I flipped it.

I used to think, oh, the entity was Pirate Clark.

And he's a manifestation of all the terrible things.

But when I saw the detail that once

she kills Pirate Clark and she's walking with Phil to

the little interview area, they have Pirate Clark

on an MRI table and under it is skull and bones and organs.

And if the entity is some other thing,

it wouldn't have skull and bone and organs.

Like a human.

So I think

it twisted and manifested into that.

And it's like, that's who you are now.

And what was sitting across from her was the

entity or whatever powers this back and is trying

to go like, look, it's all here and I love it.

It's obviously using Clark's mind.

It's using Clark's mania to kind of filter its idea through

but he's basically saying like, you're in my web now.

Yeah.

And I think it's great here.

That's funny.

Because, like, I didn't really think about

that because I always thought it was weird, especially that moment

where we're in the found footage part and we have the

entity picking up the camera and moving towards Clark and everything

I didn't really think about it in that way, but

it almost felt like in that moment he was just

possessed or taken over in some way because he started acting

like really strange when he peeked around that corner.

And I was anticipating in that moment, I was like, oh,

okay, there's going to be something really fucked up coming around the corner.

And then it's just, it's just Clark.

But he's acting like really off and odd

And whether that's because he's been in there in

the back room for like a couple of weeks.

But I strongly believed for a bit,

but they never really touched on it again.

I strongly believe that Clark was potentially

possessed or overtaken in

some way.

Everybody in my theater groaned when they saw him like peeking

out the corner for a second, when Mary turns around after

she sees that painting on the wall and he just kind of see him like just like the corner of his eye barely.

Like everyone groaned like, oh no, what's gonna happen here?

That was See, that's another example of like doing so much by

doing something so simple as he's just peeking.

Like he's not even like, I don't know.

Does that make sense at all?

Like, so much of this movie is

doing less, doing more with less.

Does that make sense?

That goes back exactly to the dread Flags.

It's like there's something very unsettling about

a guy standing half half on a wall waiting for you..

Why is he just standing there?

He should be behaving like how people behave and he's not.

Yeah.

Why does I'll go ahead.

Sorry.

No, I wonder, like if him standing like, because I

thought about it right now, if him standing like halfway between like

the wall, um, if that was kind of some kind

of representation because of like the furniture is

all like kind of some of it's like half in a wall, half in a ground or something like that.

And then he just steps out, but it's only half of them.

Owner, I don't know, maybe it's me, but I feel like I stumbled upon something with that one

Well, that's the great thing about this movie.

I feel like there's a lot of interpretations that or any interpretation almost isn't even wrong.

You know, I feel like they really like built up this world where almost anything can make sense.

Like going back to your theory, Patrick, that you were talking about,

I was reading a similar thing where they were saying that because he lives in the furniture store

the back rooms is constantly like scanning him.

So that has like a high fidelity version of Clark.

So that's why like it lends credence to that theory that what

if that Clark, like you said, at dinner isn't the real Clark?

That's just a really high fidelity

entity that is interacting with Mary.

And like, isn't it interesting that he has to reenact

little therapy session and stuff?

Although from the early in the movie, although in this version,

it was way more hostile hostile, I think, if I remember correctly.

Right.

And

why does Pirate Clark eat him, though?

That's what I don't fully understand myself.

Why do you think it's, I think it's, I think it's,

I think it's Clark trying to save her.

That's how I see it.

Interesting.

But then, but the problem is he's so broken, right?

Because

and that's the cosmic of this movie

is also what screws this movie because everybody knows

cosmic horror, the answers never come clearly.

Right.

Like the engine and mechanics of it all.

So it's like, what's in that thing, whatever Pirate Clark is

is now so maddened and madness being

the key ingredient in cosmic horror.

It's so maddened that it's like, I'm going to, I'm

going to save her from him, but also now I need to eat her.

Because you just like, there's no, there's no grasp of reality or logic anymore.

It all goes out the window

And we are we were that table scene is clearly just

saying, this, it's over, folks.

We have we have no control over ourselves in anymore.

It's gone.

Whatever's left is pure madness.

And then if you guys remember the scene with the purple

throne chair, and I was reading that

that was just like a the back room's interpretation or scan

of the commercial that Clark was shooting at the beginning of the movie as

a pyre and he sits down on his throne and then it breaks. and and

then someone said that in that same scene, you see the shoes are half buried

and they were saying, those are the shoes of his two assistants, his two workers, the couple.

I don't know what you guys think about that, but I thought that was kind of interesting, especially the throne chair.

It's like the back room saying, like, here's like what the throne, what it thinks the throne is or whatever.

But yeah, there's that theory that.

He's the captain of his boat

and he went down with it along with his crew.

Wow.

I did not think about that at all.

Because he's he's he's a pirate.

He's a captain, right?

He's Yeah, that makes sense.

And they're like his Because you know that he's sacrifices his crew.

He does.

He sacrificed his crew for his own, you know, benefit.

Like everything that Clark does is self-fululfillment

because that's what he wants.

He wants to be, you know, the center of his story.

That's why he likes being

where he's at because he has full control.

That the backrooms, although

he potentially died in it, he

was the king of his realm.

You know, that's why he loved loved being there because he can

kind of, he has a sense of control.

He couldn't control his wife

He couldn't control what his therapist said.

You know, in the back rooms, he had just control.

He was the captain of his boat.

And if anyone or anything

negative happened, you know,

he just went down with it or took him out, you know, with him.

Everything, it's just all, it's all sinking,

just like all the furniture around him.

You know, it's all sinking into the floor, sinking into the walls.

You know, it's, his ship is

sinking.

I like that.

That's what I think it is.

That's a great analogy, Alex.

I'm just going back to like what Patrick said about

how there's like how backs doesn't really have any clear answers or anything.

And isn't it interesting that we, last week's episode was we were discussing broken Flowers

and how, and Broken Flowers doesn't really give any clear answers.

And in general, Jim Jarmouche films never give any clear answers.

You know, I think that's the thing that is

now coming to the forefront where

in film, in storytelling, I

think that people are finally coming to realize that there's no clear cuters to anything.

And I think that's that ambiguity is becoming sort of this

in the zeit becoming part of

the zeitgeist of culture today.

That's why I think that films like

Broken Flowers, like any of the Jim Jarmouche films

would resonate with like fans today.

if people just gave them a chance, I think that's like would be an

important, like something that people would like really connect with

Because we're living in a

world today where there's

so many like things happening that just don't make sense.

And, and people are trying to, like,

it's, there's like we're living in a contradictive society.

People are saying one thing and doing other things, you know, and

things are happening and then another thing, the complete like sort of opposite

reaction to something happens.

And it's kind of fitting, you know,

and we go back to like, you're saying, Adrian, about

like the modern day folklore, this is it.

Like, and I think you're, you like, think the more I think about

it through like sitting through this conversation, yeah, it's

we're, we're in an era right now.

We're like when we like going back to another film

we just discussed, Taxi Driver, you know, we were people

are wanting to see films that resonate with our reality today.

Like, we're We're

over the whole idea of escapism.

I mean, films are still escapism, but

at the same time, we also want stories that resonate with us.

And it's important to create these

stories that connect with us deeper than just, oh, that was cool.

You know, I want something.

I've, for me, that's always been something that I've always wanted.

You know, I don't, not to say that I don't love a good,

like action film from time to time, but it's always been my thing where it's like

well, that was great.

That's that's junk food for me.

Like, what can I really truly sync my teeth into?

And I think that's becoming more prevalent with like the filmms that are coming out now.

I agree wholeheartedly, Patrick.

Just piggybacking right off of what Alex said there.

It's it people want to be able to relate to the story they're seeing on the screen.

If you're a superhero that can fix everything

There's nothing real about that.

What's real right now is that I'm overwhelmed by the life that sits in front

of me and the world at large that I can't fix.

And I want to, I want to relate on the

screen to people that are going through that same thing.

I want to know I'm not alone in that

in all of that pain.

I think that's the the biggest, the biggest thing is like in

times like the times we live in, movies that

are a little bit more bleak, like obsession, like back rooms,

even a movie like Smile, I would not have done well pre-pandemic.

But post-pandemic, the movies like Smile and Smile 2,

you go, yeah, it's kind of an inescapable dread, isn't it?

It's kind of something that is always coming for you.

It's relentless.

Isn't that the interesting thing too?

Like for people who have gone through therapy or who are currently going

through therapy, that's the lot of the important thing is like we want to feel like people

understand where we are, what we're, what we're going through.

And that's like one of the main things that reasons

why you go to therapy is like, not, not that they,

like, um, truly understand, but they're,

they're giving you a space to

relay what you've been through, what you what you're going through.

And it's it's a way to connect, even though

they may not have been able to walk in your shoes,

you know, in any sort of tangible way

but yet there's still there.

And I think that's what film does with what we're going through it now.

Yeah.

Justin?

I'm just going to say real quick, I think the first Smile movie was God awful.

And the second Smile movie was surprisingly my favorite.

That movie was so fucking good.

I'm just saying.

Skip Smile the first Smile.

Smile too..

I love I couldn't couldn't stand the first one, man.

I really couldn't.

I was like, ugh.

Smile was legitimately my number one horror movie that year.

I loved it.

And then Smile too.

Smile 2, I actually like more than than

the original Smile, but that year Smile 2 came out, like a

bunch of bangers came out and I was like, wow, that was just a great year.

We should do both of those movies. on the show great movies.

Yeah.

But I was going to say as well is to

pickgyback off of you, Alex as well.

When it comes to movies,

horror movies, it doesn't matter what it is.

I would say mostly horror movies, but anytime

I see a movie and it resonates with me a lot,

I kind of go off the deep end on being like, hey, you guys gotta

everybody has to check this movie out.

This shit's like, you know, regardless if someone agrees with me or not.

But I think whenever I get really excited about

something or a movie that I feel like that I can relay to.

And, you know, speaking of like therapy and things like that,

it's like these are these are

the things that I like and I'm showing

them to you because this is also my venue

to be seen as well because I

think that pieces of me, it might not be me

100%, but I feel like this movie represents pieces of me that

I'm showing everybody to the world.

I'm like, you know, I can relate to this movie.

I really love this scene of this movie.

Or, you know, maybe I didn't really like this movie too much, but I love it soundtrack

shout out, knock knock or whatever that movie is with Keanu Ree's awful movie.

But great soundtrack, though.

It's just pieces of me.

And it's I do that all

the time, whether people get that or not.

I don't think a lot of people understand when I show people things

I'm literally trying to show you a piece of me and

to show you like a little bit

deeper of who I am on the inside

than having to outright tell somebody and explain somebody why I do and say

and show people certain things.

Like whether you're excited about it or not, you know, these

things relate to me in a certain way.

No, I like that.

I mean, isn't that the great thing about art?

You know, like, you can use any piece of art that say

like, yep, you want to understand me a little bit better.

Listen to this song, watch this movie, read this book.

You know, like, that's great, you know, and

this movie seems to have done that to a lot of people.

And I don't know, just going back to the whole lesses

Moore thing, you know, it, uh, it

didn't have to have a big budget in all these big set people pieces to like really resonate with people.

And I think that's great.

But it did have a big set piece.

It was 30,000 square feet that was built.

That's a huge set piece.

Yeah.

That's crazy that they built that much.

And then I guess I read the crew was getting lost.

It was that big.

Yeah. creeped out.

There was something where Kane himself was

saying that like, I guess he was asking asked the question, like, oh, did you ever

explore, you know, the set by yourself?

He was like, yeah, I would like turn all the lights off and explore with a flashlight.

And I'm like, no, bro, turn that into a million fucking attraction.

I will pay whatever amount of money to do the same thing, you know, Oh, my God.

Such a great idea.

I was at the bottom level of a parking garage the other day

It was dark.

It was quiet.

There was like no cars.

And I thought I was going to get stabbed.

But I immediately thought of this movie.

I was like, I'm in the fucking back rooms right now.

What is going on?

So

yeah, I think a good movie will entertain you for 90 or so minutes.

A great movie will stick with you and you're thinking about it and you're dreaming about it and you're talking about it.

And yeah, for me, this is one of those movies.

I don't know.

This to me is one of the best movies of the year so far.

We're only six months in.

There's still time.

But

yeah, that's back rooms.

I mean, did anybody else want to, was there any other, I feel like there's so much we could keep going on about with this movie.

Patrick did, did you have any other interesting points?

No, other than it's just a seriously

incredible movie.

Like, it really far exceeded my expectations.

I was already very interested in seeing it

And it turned into something that I was just like,

wow, I didn't expect it was going to be this heady, this, this introspective and stuff.

So I was just very pleasantly surprised by back rooms.

No, no, on, hold on, hold on.

Sorry, sorry.

Donnie?

Yeah.

I just wanted to bring up..

We were talking about a little bit about it earlier, how,

you know, everybody, this was more of a popular movie than some of the other movies that recently came out.

I wanted to compare it to, I went to go watch Masters of the Universe.

And just wanted to say like, I thought it was a great movie, right?

There's a lot of nostalgia nostalgia attached to that.

And it's interesting to see how more people are gravitating

towards this and finding this more relatable when

nostalgia itself is a strong tool for reflection and

also about social connectedness, right?

So I just really think it's interesting that we're

seeing that shift and more people are relating to what we're seeing

nowadays in theater with the independent films or

like the YouTubers being famous and, you know,

being more successful on the big screen.

Like, even when I took my son, we saw both movies.

I saw both movies with my.

I saw both movies.

My son saw both movies as well.

He was more excited about back rooms than than Masters of the Universe.

But he liked Oh, that's interesting.

But I thought, yeah.

He took him to see backwards liked

I didn't.

He went with his mom, but I took him to see Masters of the Universe.

And he did see that about it liked it.

He did see back.

He saw it before he saw Masters of the Universe, I think.

Yeah, yeah.

So I just cared.

It really connects, though, to that like Justin was talking about it earlier too.

When I watched Backrooms, I did see a lot of

what I see when my son plays computer games.

Like the way that it's set up and everything, it's very reminiscent

of like me watching him play these games in first person.

and they're like horror games.

Like I can't even remember the name of it, but it looks very similar to that.

And I have a feeling that's why he liked it more.

You know what what they need to do?

seriously?

They need to give like, give Spielberg $10 million,

give King Parses $80 million, and let's see what they make.

Like, flip it, right?

Spielberg's been in the game for too long now.

Stop giving him something small.

Let him make something

granular, something that's more grounded in reality.

You don't think so?

I got to tell you, like, we had just talked about

Disclosure Day, which I think why, in my opinion, it's not hitting.

I know a lot of people like Disclosure Day, but I don't think it's hitting the way it is because it tries to give you the answers.

It tries to say it can all be okay.

And that's not the times we're living in.

But I always say this.

At the end of the year

they should take the top grossing,

whatever the top grossing movie is of the year, and then the

next year, that directctor has to make a low budget movie.

Ah, like congratulations.

Similar to what I'm saying then.

Yes.

I've said it for years now.

It's like, and honestly, and why I like put 10

toes down on that is it creates event

movies where it's like, ooh, let's go see the,

the half a million dollar Spielberg movie and see what he did.

Exactly.

Like, just see, and by the way, like, it's incredible

what Spielberg can do when he whipped up that movie, I think it was the paper

with Meryl Streep, the Post.

Yeah.

With Meryl Streep, like, he did that in 30 days.

And I was like, why isn't he doing a bunch of little dramas I don't all the time?

I wish he would.

I wish he would.

He's so good at that stuff.

Yeah, I agree.

You know how like what sports game is it where they have trade-offs every year?

What is it called?

What am I thinking about football?

Is it football where they do a draft?

Every sport does that.

I don't think about sports.

But basketball does that.

What I'm getting at, we need to have a creative draft, like

similar to what you're saying, Patrick, which, by the way, you had your hand up.

Was there something you wanted to add to?

I think I was just saying like, because Donnie was talking about his kids.

My kids loved it the first time and could not wait to see it again

And for it to be like a heady Alex Garlandy type movie, I was so impressed by that.

That's all I was going to say.

Well, and I have a question for you guys as well.

I was thinking about this a little bit earlier.

You know, Clark is this failed architect

turned struggling furniture salesman.

Mary is this therapist who's trying to hawk some videootapes, not having much success.

They're both lonely

I mean, can we ship them?

I mean, why is nobody talking about this union?

Like, I know there wasn't a romantic suppplot, which, by the way,

I'm glad for that, but like, is there something there?

Is there a?

Was there a possibility?

There is so not.

In that opening, when he is berating

his wife as their role playing, yeah, there's no way Mary

would be like, oh, yeah, maybe I'll date this guy at some point.

Just be like, oh, you have a lot to work on.

So no shipping.

No, there will be no shipping not as far as Mary's concerned.

Yeah, that's true.

That's There's no shared trauma.

There's just sharing trauma and another person

being like, no, uh, this is not for me.

Yeah.

The only strong relationship we saw was Bobby and Kat and, you know, they got taken out pretty early on.

What happens to Kat?

What do you guys think about that?

Anybody theories on that?

She just kind of disappears.

We never really see the end result.

Oh, we we see the end resulting.?

Oh, yeah, we do.

Oh, yeah. clock up into the fridge.

Her head falls out of the fridge or whatever.

Her head's in the fridge, yeah.

Oh, shit.

I miss it alluding to that Clark murdered

her, because there was a wall that separated him.

Yeah.

She could obviously see him on the other side.

Yeah.

And she was warning him about something behind him, but then it like cuts off.

And I think that's when he kind of gets possessed by

whatever or overtaken by whatever

and which is what ends up like, maybe they like find each other.

And again, this is all assumption because we don't know.

And they find each other again and then he just stes up like murders her.

Remember, like how he's like, he, how did he figure out

that they could be eaten except for him trying?

You know what I mean?

He didn't He didn't know that these still lives could be eaten.

So maybe, I don't know, maybe he murdered her and he was hungry.

Didn't know that the still lives could be eaten.

So he ate her and prepared her instead.

Then he was like, okay, well, there's nobody else around here.

I'm going to try to see if I can eat these stilll And then he's like, well, I can eat them.

Yeah, I can definitely do that.

Wow, that recontextualizes that whole dinner scene.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I didn't realize that was Cat's head.

The biggest scary moments for me was when Bobby's

rappelling down that fucking tunnel into the room with all the clothes

And I was like, this is this is not going to end well.

And it doesn't.

That was a nail biting scene.

And then the other one was quick was the fucking Christmas tree.

As soon as I saw that Christmas tree out, everybody in the theater was like, oh, no.

Like what is it about a fucking Christmas tree that creeps you out?

I don't The scariest one part for me, though, was

the staircase and then that I'm afraid of heights.

Oh, yeah.

So yeah.

Oh, when Mary's going up this, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, just the sight of like every floor you could see.

Yeah.

I mean, there's a hotel here in San Diego where it's like, I think it's a brand

where, there's it's they're a tall building and

they usually have the open format where you that

you every floor you could see down into the atrium..

I hate those kinds of hotels.

I really do.

Like, I remember when I was doing DoorDash,

I had to deliver some food to like some of some rooms.

And I hated going to the higher floors

because like you' like go up and it's like, no, no, please, no, please no.

You get a vertical, doesn't it?

Yeah, it's crazy.

And so I would like

literally walk against the wall just

so I wouldn't be as close to the edge.

And I know it's like, far enough, but like it's still like

frightenening to me because like it feels so close and then

you see, you see in the distance the other side of that floor, but you're like, there's this gap

you know, and this movie really reminds you of

a lot of those type of things and then and the other way around, too, where you'll see something.

I'm like, oh.

Well, you know, that's one of those things where like, is memory, like replays your fears as well.

So yeah, you know, I' Maybe that's something

that was in Mary's memory, you know, and's maybe

she has aear a fear of heights and that's something that she had to like go through

you know, like, especially going up that st staircase and like she could easily fall, you know?

Yeah.

Justin?

Just to step back a little bit, the

scene that scared me a little bit was,

and it was almost like, almost a nothing scene,

but it scared me so much was when they were going down into

that the into the belly of the rooms

And, and then like the camera's panning around.

and then you see that face sticking up out of the clothes, but it's actually

just like, it's just that cardboard cut out.

Yeah.

I was was a real head.

That shit scared the shit out of me.

I was like, what the fuck is going on?

It's like, what the fuck is that?

Um, That scene scared me a lot.

Um, but also, uh the Christmas

tree scene, it was scary to me,

probably in a little bit of a different way.

Right.

I think Clark has probably an

awful memoryory involving Christmas,

which is why that scene is there.

But I think Christmas in of itself is kind of a scary thing for me

only because I don't necessarily have

like, you know, anybody to really celebrate it with.

I think when I've celebrated it with Donnie here,

you know, on a, a couple of the years already, but um,

that, that's more of like a, a trauma thing for me.

It just, I think more or less just brings up

Um, how Christmas, uh,

people just don't, you you kind of know how people

don't give a shit about you because nothing comes from it,

not a call, not a hello, not a, nothing.

And I think, I think Christmas is more of a trauma thing.

And I think that's scary in a different sense, though.

I love that, that scene could tap

into your psyche and like, for you in one way, for me in

a different way, for me, it reminded me of like, as above,

so below, I don't know why.t I'm sure you've seen that movie,

but but yeah, there's something about the context of Christmas and like this horror setting

that like, I don't know, it just sparks something visceral in me.

So yeah, great, great point on that.

One more question before we start to wrap her up.

I really want to talk about this really quick.

Who the hell is the redhaired lady and who the hell is the guy in the wheelchair?

Like, what are your leading theories on that?

Patrick?

I'll start with you.

The red-haired lady is the wife, for sure.

Okay, so that is the wife.

Okay.

Yes.

And yeah, that was, I think we didn't

you meet her in the Christmas scene for a little bit.

She's She's going to in the background starts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then I think she's yet another version when

we meet her in the, in the, um, in the dinner scene.

And, and then it's very interesting that she reacts

to Pirate Clark coming because it's like,

I read that was because people were saying that maybe they was an abusive relationship there between Clark and his wife.

So she associates the Clark that comes home from work with something to fear.

And so to me, that's that's open and shut,

but I am all ears on the man and, on the small man in the wheelchair.

Who the hell is that guy?

I have a theory on it because I'm not sure myself

Um, my, my theory is, uh,,

in some shape or form, and I'm not entirely too sure how

or why, and I can be completely wrong.

But I think it's Mark, um Duplos's character.

Um, you know, the guy that they see at the end, uh, the guy from Creep, all those movies and stuff.

Phil, that's his name.

I think, I think it's some version of him because it cuts to a scene with him

at dinner

with his family on the couch and things like that.

And I correct me if I'm wrong, but there's there's a lamp in that living room.

I'm just not sure if it's, if it's that lamp in

particular, but his wife is

I believe, it's either his wife or someone. someone there's there's

a chair in there that's next to that lamp that represents

the little chair that the guy sitting in.

So I think it's just a still life of Phil, maybe.

And he has a name, Archibald Leland

Sutter, which people were pointing that out.

It's ALS

ALS using a wheelchair.

There's some connection there, I guess.

The bigger

gentleman that was sitting at the table that Clark fucking stabs

him and pulls out some pound cake or cotton or whatever that was.

That was the mechanic or that was the technician guy from early in the movie, wasn't it?

The guy that was playing around with the

the trip box.

The Tripper, right?

The Breakers?

The Breakers, yeah.

I think it's a different guy.

Oh, no, it was a different guy, yeah.

Was it?

I thought it was the same chubby.

No.

Okay.

Well.

maybe we'll get more answers in the next movie.

I don't know.

Any Any other ideas on who the redheaded woman or the wheelchair man?

Donnie, did you have anything on that?

What did you think about that, Donnie?

Just in general?

Yeah, that was weird.

I don't know.

I didn't I didn't know.

I knew who the redhead, oh, I figured it was his Wi-Fi.

I had no clue who the wheelchair guy is.

I know there's a lot of

a lot of Easter eggs in the movie, but I didn't I didn't dig into it.

So I don't know if that's one of those Easter eggs that's associated with like,

you know, the lore he created on YouTube, but it might be.

I don't know.

Justin.

Yeah, I was actually just looking through the IMDB.

So I noticed, I thought it was pretty interesting.

Robert Bobroki, I hope I said his name right.

That's also, okay, so he plays, uh, I think

he's a stand-in for Pirate Clark.

He's also that hybrid alien Oh, yeah.

in the latest alien movie.

Yeah.

That actor.

Andong everything else.

Yeah.

Yo, that guy is getting some work, man.

He's scary, tall.

You know, he is he is kind of scary.

I assume Pyate Clark was all CG.

I thought it was completely CGI.

I don't know that they actually had a guy

in a suit or whatever.

Yeah, that was great.

It looked fantastic.

When he bites down on Clark's shoulder, have you ever seen that?

What's that painting?

Venus eating his son or Venus devouring his.

Yeah, so many good, I don't know why people complain.

This movie was great, man.

This is seriously one of the greatest movies of the year.

Fuck him.

But yeah, any other theories on anything else?

I mean, I mean, I don't know, but I feel like we could go gone forever.

Like I said, Patrick, did you have any of the final?

I have I have one question for the group.

Anyone's free to answer.

Do we believe Phil is trapped up in the back rooms as well?

That's a good one.

Like when I see him in his house with his family, there's no discernible windows.

There's no discernible light.

And it's something about it felt uncanny to me.

And I thought to myself, he's trapped in there, but he's just not sick the way everyone else is.

I think that

he is.

And because it like the way, when they show

all the different scenes that via dioramas,

if you will, of all the different real places

that are in, you know, like you

see the Ottoman Empire store

front and then you see the facimile

of it or whatever in the back room and you see so many of those different things

And who's to say that there's

a level that we're actually some of these people who have

been to the back room.

And because if you think about it too, like when Mary is

escaping the back room, right, she's like running, she

thought she goes into a storefront of

of the Ottoman Empire

and you think she's going to be able to escape,

but then she gets to the front doors and then you see a wall there and that's it.

That's like kind of so like, well, you have to escape boundaries.

Yeah.

And so like,

who's to say that there isn't a a

part of the back rooms where

there where Phil is actually able to live

out part of his memory?

Maybe in a loop of sorts,

maybe he is living a loop per se.

Maybe these things already have happened with.

Like Westworld.

Exactly, yeah.

There you go.

And so I do think that

they're all, there's this point where once you see the backs, you can't see it.

That's the tagline, right?

Once you see it, you'll never be able to see unsee it or something like that.

And that's it's kind of true because

like it's it then sort of free in my head, you know, and like the same.

I like that theory.

I mean, I've read a theoryory that like even all the shots in the

real world seemed very liminal, like Clark's house, the apartment

complex that Bobby and Kent live in.

And by the way, those shots

at the end, the facsimile of when they cut away

to Mary's character and her version of the back rooms where she's her face is all morphed and stuff.

And then it cuts like that was creepy, but then it cuts to

all the montage of shots of like the missing poster signs,

you know, the, the rubble from Mary's apartment complex and

I forget what else, but like all that for me was like such

a stark, like creepy montage of sequence that

like, again, there was nothing but music underneath it, and that was it.

And that's what the movie ends.

And who's to say this?

What if this entity, this is that's this entity's whole goal is to just

let people live out in

memory in loops, you know?

Yeah.

Like, this is how he feeds.

This is how he's able to, how it's able to

feed and survive by like

recreating these drawing

people into this back room and

then they have to forever live out this loop where it's

kind of like almost like a drain, you know, where it's like,

you feel this like sort of somewhat of a, like it's real, like

the surface level and it just goes in more and more down.

And then it just, then you become this degradated version of yourself

where like, like you see at the very end, you see Mary

and she's just just like degradated version of herself.

That's a great one, yeah.

All right.

Well, gentlemen, I do have, yeah, let's do our final

thoughts, but I want to do it in the form of a question, which I was thinking about this

and kind of a fun one..

Let's in on a fun note, I think.

I'll start with you, Patrick.

You know, obviously, Clark in this movie, his back rooms is sort of a

version of his real life, which is like furniture all over the place and stuff like that.

What does your back rooms look like if you discover

another world?

When you walk in, what does your back rooms look like?

Patrick?

Move over back to you.

I'm I'm by nature a minimalist.

This This is my office behind you, and I have one painting up.

It's a lithograph of alien.

I'm a minimalist, so my back rooms would be just

endless concrete walls

Just like, it would be so empty

and vacant and I would be very peaceful in there, honestly.

Great.

What Where can people find you?

Anything you want to plug?

What are you working on?

Yes.

My current short film is a horror short

called The Path, and it is making the rounds and film festivals.

I think it's got a couple coming up in the fall.

And if you want information on that Instagram

at Director Patrick, also TikTok at Director Patrick

And of course, the rewind of the Living Dead podcast,

we break down one movie every week, this week, actually, as as of

this recording, we broke down Leviticus and talked about that.

So check us out also on Instagram,

Facebook, Twitter, you can find Rewinded Living Dead, and our patron, Patreon,

Patreon.com forward slash Rewind of the Living Dead, where there's

lots of bonus content that I have to go record.

By the way, I love the short film that I watched on on

the short film map that you had mentioned.

I forget the name of the film.

Oh, Mo Me Too.

Yes, that was my drama short.

Yeah.

The drama short.

Don't do it.

Don't do it.

And it was like a montage of different scenarios.

And even on that, like less is more, right?

And And you did that so well, that whole single.

Thank you.

So congratulations.

Good luck with the festival circuit.

So

thank you for being on.

Donnie, let's go to you next.

What does your back rooms look like, Donnie?

What do you see half buried or not?

What's weird?

What's strange?

Yeah, it looks like it looks like Mary's living room.

And Mary's living room looks like she lives with a 10 year old.

So it's like I

close everywhere.

Everything is just like not in place and I'm trying to get

to the minimalist style, but it's like, or lifestyle, but it's just not happening for me.

So it was just a clutter.

And yeah, that's that's my back.

How far, how far into you traverse before you're like, nope, I'm getting the fuck out of here.

Yeah, right.

I don't even know.

What can people find you?

I' You can find me on all the socials underscore Donnie Appleseed.

If you want to check out my photography, it's 125 photography, all in one word, mainly on Instagram.

Nice.

Justin, let's go to you next week.

What does your back rooms look like?

You know, this entire time you asked that question, I was trying to

think about it, and I don't really know

I don't know.

I think I would want an endless destructible environment.

Like, I don't, there doesn't have to be anything in there.

It can be completely devoid of anything except for

for myself as long as I'm allowed to

have some tools to help, like destroy some walls and things like that.

I

I think my back rooms would be an endless rage room.

Yeah, I think that's what I think that's what it would be.

It's just I would be allowed to like,

you know, go through walls, like destroy walls, go through them.

And it would be me just trying to like clear

clear as many walls as I can out so I can see

straight from the portal I enter through all the

way to however far I decide I want to make it.

But I think I would use the back rooms as a rage room.

So whenever I'm frustrated, feeling a

type of way, I would go in there and express my rage in there.

And I just hope there's nothing in there to try to kill me.

I love that, actually.

You can find me, Ghost

Nerd 888 on Instagram and

other places, Letterbox as well.

And, you know, honestly, I'll just give a rating for this movie.

Honestly, I give it a five out of five, man.

This is like one of my favorites

of this year, for sure.

I mean, Obsession is probably one of my favorites as well.

I don't like to compare the two because they are two completely different movies

with different theming, but

Back Room's awesome movie.

I hope either one of them wins in some shape or form.

Yeah.

Thank you, Justin.

Sorry, Patrick and Donnie.

I forgot to ask.

Yeah, we'll start with you, Patrick.

What's your letterbox score for this?

I am a one-man stand against ratings.

Oh, yeah.

As a filmmaker, they insult me to my core.

I believe that Letterbox and Rotten Tomatoes

have created an unnecessary social currency

for films that only harms filmmakers.

And so I'll get off my soapbox now.

I refuse to I refuse to rate movies.

That's so interesting.

Thank you for that, though.

That's actually interesting.

Donnie.

Can I say real quick, in light of that?

So what I personally do, and I think some of

us do this as well, is that if I,

if I really, really like a movie, I'm going to rate it

relatively well, even if the

rating isn't like entirely like a five out of five

or 10 out of 10 or whatever, I'm going to rate it.

However, except for one movie in

existence for me, in particular, but I

normally don't rate movies if I don't like them.

I kind of leave it as is, as I don't comment.

I don't review it.

I just don't rate it because I don't like it.

Now, the one movie I'm talking about

is I hope we cover it eventually one day.

I absolutely despise this movie, but it's,

was it something of a Valerian

planet of a thousand, whatever.

Was Dude, that movie sucks?

No.

I don't know.

I don't know.

It was bad.

Anyway.

Donnie.

It was done by the same guy who did, what's that?

Found footage superhero film?

Luc Ban.

Oh, yeah, no, that's right.

It wasn't that guy.

It was freaking

the Fifth element guy.

That was also Lucus, yeah.

Yeah.

Never mind.

Sorry, Donnie.

What's your letterbox or what's your rating for this movie?

I give it a four out of five.

Thank you.

I'm going to add this all together.

Don't worry.

Sorry, guys.

Alex, what does your back rooms look like?

My back rooms look like looks

like a how it is right now. kidding.

No, tubs and tubs and tubs of

tea t-shirts that I've like bought once and never worn.

just because I collected them because

I felt like I wanted to support an artist and I was like, oh, cool.

But then I realized how much I didn't like the design.

So it's just going to be a bunch of tubs of

like bands and artists that I supported, but

didn't really like their t-shirts

designed.

I just didn't want to give them money.

Basically just a bunch of regret.

in t-shirt form.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it would be like when you go to Comic-Cons and you

see the tower of T-irt-shirts, it'd just be like that, but

like on every single row in the convention center.

As long.

Okay, so the preface is, as long as those T-shirts

were made by an artist and they printed it out themselves and they like work really hard on it.

And I'm like, I like you.

You're cool.

And then you buy it because as you thought it would look cool, but

then you bring it home and you're like, ah

it's not as cool as I thought.

It was just kind of like buyer's regret kind of thing.

And that's what I meant.

So yeah, it would be like those towers, but more organized into tubs.

Wow.

And what's your rating on?

My rating, I gave it a four and a half out of five.

Nice.

And you can find me at Daily Dare

and all the socials and go check out my depot atectible Galaxy.

where you can find all those shirts that I regreted buy.

Nice.

Mine would be pretty simple.

A lot of half-bried, unfinished screenplay projects,

maybe a couple of coding projects, a bunch of books I bought

and have not read because I just like to buy books and not read them for some reason

Plenty of toys, Legos,

mostly, similar to you, Donnie, with having an eight-year-old, and definitely

some regret sprinkled throughout, you know, a little bit of regret here and

there, you know, in the form of all sorts of things.

But, yeah, that's, that's, and I wouldn't go very far

into it because I'm like, I see this shit every day in real life.

So

let me get back out, type of thing.

But yeah, I wanted to end

on another fun note in lieu of my review or anything like

that, what you can find on Letterbox I gave it four stars.

I wanted to show you guys something really cool.

This was from

Here we go.

This is from a Reddit user.

I came across Reddit

user, Reddit user Olivans.

Olivans made a weap website that I think you guys should check out.

It's called The Closet.

The Criterion, it's the criterion-closet

Val. app.

I'll share it in the show notes, but basically it's like a virtual

version of the criterion closet.

And I thought this was really cool.

You can like browse around

virtually and you can pick a movie. like let's say this one.

And oh, you got, you got this movie right here.

The Great Dictator stream that one.

Yeah.

Bu on them.

You know, they got the little synopsis.

I thought I thought this is just really cool.

And I asked.

Do they have a Shaw Brothers collection in there?

Where's that?

Do you see that already?

I have no idea.

Oh.

But yeah, it's the criterion.

It's the dash criteria. dash criterion dashcloset

dashversersell. app.

And I don't know, if you're a movie lover, a movie buff like we all are here, check it out.

This is like a little home brew project.

Looks like you can even do some searching here.

I just love the way visually it's set up.

You know, you click on anything and you get some information on it.

That's a great movie, by the way, Old Joy.

Kelly Reichhartt's my favorite director.

Oh, there you go.

Perfect pick.

I'm starting to add like some of these in my watch

list on Letterbox because I'm like, well, that sounds really interesting.

you know, so, yeah, check this website.

I'll share it in the show notes for this episode.

I thought that was pretty cool.

So there you go.

That's, that's the show.

And

All right, gentlemen.

Well, yeah, so you can find, you can find me on Letterbox at Boots Too big, by the way.

You can find the show everywhere else.

Follow us.

We're on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, Blue Sky, Facebook X.

Visit our website or neverseodcast.com. email us at podcast onnese it at gmail.com.

We'd love to hear from you. subscribe to us on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube

or wherever you get your podcasts from.

And if you like the show, share it, leave us a comment, leave us a review.

Big thanks to Mr. Kyle and a burn cycle for the intro

and music you can Kyle on Instagram at selfies

underscore undersc underscore pets.

We didn't have Arnold tonight, but that's fine.

We'll get his snooze a meeting later.

Thanks for listening.

Any final thoughts from the gentlemen tonight?

Clark's a narcissist.

Anything anybody else?

All right.

I belong here.

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